“A little.”
“Well, I’m hitting McDonald’s before work. If you want, you can come plead your case. But I’m too hangry to be human on an empty stomach.”
* * *
We waited in line at McDonald’s and she explained why she didn’t trust what Gert was saying, about getting on the right track and changing.
“As much as I’d like to think he’s changed, after the last time we broke up, I can’t throw myself headfirst into this shit. I just can’t.”
“He said he will not be involved with Toucan anymore.”
“I don’t know this Toucan asshole, but I know people like him. And if your brother owes him money, that’s bad news.”
“But that’s why you should stay! You can be his fair maiden!”
“Honey, I’m nobody’s fair maiden. Gert has to learn to take care of himself.”
We got to the front of the line and ordered our food. AK47 liked the McMuffins and I liked pancakes.
“Look. For whatever reason, I have a soft spot for that asshole in my heart. Maybe it’s because of poor role models growing up and I feel the need to save birds with broken wings.”
“What if we make him go back?”
“Make him? The point is he has to start doing things himself. This was his chance.”
“He can take courses again if he failed,” I said. “You have to give heroes the chance to face defeat and then rise above it.”
She put her McMuffin down. “Zelda.”
“You are always talking about how I need to be given the chance to take care of myself and be my own legend, and you helped me pick out clothes for my job so I can be my best Viking self.”
“It’s not the same thing.” AK47 didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She stared out the window at a van that was trying to park into a space that was too small for it. “I just, I love him, I do. And I want things to work. But it’s not so simple.”
Then I thought about things that helped me in my legend, and I realized what Gert needed more than anything. “I think we should make rules for Gert to follow,” I said. “We need a RULES FOR LIFE FOR GERT.”
AK47 laughed.
“He’s a grown man, and I don’t know if you noticed, but your brother is very much against rules.”
“I am a grown woman and rules help me,” I said. “And these will be rules for the tribe. If he loves us, he will agree to follow them. Do you trust me?”
AK47 took a drink of her juice. “It’s not about trusting you, it’s about—”
“Do you?” I asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Then I’m asking you to trust Gert and give him a chance to be a hero again.”
AK47 put her juice down and wiped her mouth. I could tell she was thinking. Her brows were wiggling.
“Okay, but if he screws up, that’s it.”
“We will give him his rules and if he breaks them then that’s it.”
She smiled. “You’re a good sister, you know that? He’s lucky to have you.”
“Us,” I said. “He’s lucky to have us, because we will keep him in line.”
I dipped my hash brown into the maple syrup container until it was almost all covered with syrup and put it in my mouth. If Gert was here he would probably tell me to use less maple syrup and be less messy, even though it was me who ate the hash browns, not him. I wanted him to stop doing things like that. I was getting tired of rules that other people made for me. I wanted to make my own rules.
“When things are my business,” I said, “I want them to be my business. I want to have my own business. Like the sex.”
We talked about how Gert had gotten so angry about the idea of me and Marxy having sex. AK47 actually thought that Gert had a point, though she didn’t agree fully with him.
“By point I mean, it’s probably normal for him to feel weird about it. On the other hand, Marxy’s mother is right. You do need to talk about it. And he needs to not get weird when someone says ‘period.’ ”
“Maybe that should be one of the things on our RULES FOR GERT. No getting mad about sex and periods.”
She nodded. “Good start.” The rest of the McMuffin went into her mouth. She used one of her fingers to wipe extra cheese off her lips. After two chews she swallowed all of the food in her mouth. She pulled a pen out of her bag and clicked the tip out.
She flattened the receipt from the food on the table and stared down at it. She tapped the pen against her chin.
“I mean, we don’t want to be too harsh,” she said.
“I want you to be back together,” I said. “Why would I make it harder for you to get together again?”
“Yeah, but I have him by the balls, and with your brother that almost never happens. I figure we can put our heads together and maybe get the most out of this, while he’s ready to make concessions.”
A concession could mean a stand, where hot dogs and soda are sold at basketball games, or it could mean giving something you don’t want to give to another person, so that you can get something you want back.
AK47 and I were trying to figure out which concessions Gert would want to make so that he can get what he wants, to be back together with AK47. And actually, she wanted to get back together with him too, but for her it was backward. Her concession was getting together with Gert, since there is a lot of crap that is part of being together with my brother.
“He needs to cut the bullshit,” I said. “Right?”
AK47 started writing on the receipt.
“Good. We have to make sure they’re specific enough, you know? So that if he gets pissed we can have ammo to fire back at him. We need them to be demands. I’ve already confiscated the gun, so we can cross that off the list.”
“What does confiscated mean?”
“I’ve taken it from him and will be getting rid of it. So we can cross that off our list of demands.”
Demands are the opposite of concessions. When warring tribes meet to decide what happens next, if they don’t want to fight with swords, they fight with words to figure out who gets what. They fight with demands.
AK47 had four demands to getting back together with Gert. They were “deal-breakers.” She would not make concessions about any of them. They were:
Gert would have to begin going to see Dr. Laird on his own again, which he’d stopped doing.
He would not sell pot anymore or be friends with people like Toucan, who is almost for sure a villain, AK47 said, since she asked around and apparently a lot of people believe he is a “shady motherfucker.” Shady motherfuckers are worse than fuck-dicks and shit-heels combined, according to AK47.
Gert would do summer school in order to make up for the credits he lost when he dropped courses.
He would throw away his gun.
We put a check mark next to Number 4, because AK47 had taken away the gun.
I asked her why she didn’t have another deal-breaker about Gert having sex with other girls.
“That goes without saying,” she said. “Actually, it doesn’t go without saying. Good call.”
She wrote “Don’t have sex with other people” on the receipt.
My demands were that I wanted him to stop telling me what to do all the time. For example, when it comes to having sex with Marxy, he cannot stop me. I had also decided that I wanted to have my own job.
“And I would like his support,” I said. “And I am going to open my own bank account and contribute to the tribe.”
AK47 smiled and said we could do that without him. “You can just go into the bank and open an account. Though you should probably get someone to go with you before you sign anything.”
We continued writing our RULES FOR GERT.
On the ride home, I thought of a different demand. It wasn’t just for Gert. It was for AK47 too. And it wasn’t a RULE, it was something I wanted.
She had the radio on and turned down the volume. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“I want to see the essay,” I said.
“The one that got him the scholarship.”
She did not say anything. I asked her what was going on in her brain. She said that she didn’t know if I wanted to read it.
“I mean, I know you think you do, but it was written for a particular audience. It wasn’t written for you to read.”
“Gert wrote it, and it’s about me. I want to see.”
It started to rain. The sun was mostly gone behind clouds and rain spat on the windshield. AK47 turned on the wipers. I watched them go back and forth for a while. I had made a demand of her and I realized that I did not have any way to force her to show me the essay. Also Gert would not want to show me either.
“Like I said,” AK47 said, turning toward our apartment building, “that’s his call.”
* * *
It was very official when we brought Gert our list of RULES FOR GERT. We sat around the kitchen table. Each of us sat at a different corner. We were in a business meeting. AK47 had rewritten our demands on a piece of paper with two rows: one for her demands, and one for my demands. We wanted to make it more official-looking than the receipt and the napkin.
“You got to be kidding,” he said, holding the paper up. “What is this, the Second World War? Which one of you is Poland?”
“Deal-breakers,” I said. “That’s what those are.”
“Why do you have deal-breakers on here?” he said to me.
“I’m negotiating on her behalf,” AK47 said. Gert shook his head.
“Two against one. How’s that fair?”
Gert went through the list. He said he was fine with everything, even seeing Dr. Laird.
“You can’t go Berserker.”
“I’m fine.”
“The sex thing, though,” Gert said.
“It’s her body,” AK47 said. “Her life.”
“It’s my body and my life,” I said. “And when you love people, you show them your love by touching each other in ways that are nice. I love Marxy.”
Gert frowned, but he didn’t say no, didn’t say anything. He just stared at the list.
After, to show he was ready to follow THE RULES, he went and knocked on Alf’s door and told Alf he was sorry. Alf had bruises on his face and answered the door with a steak knife that he held in front of him. He said he would cut Gert up badly if Gert tried anything.
“He’s here to apologize,” I announced.
Alf’s eyes were puffy and narrow and he didn’t put the knife down. “Is that so?”
I gave Gert a little push. He looked at me, then at AK47, who had her arms crossed.
“It wasn’t right, what I did,” Gert said finally.
“Goddamn right,” Alf said.
“What else?” AK47 said to Gert.
“I was also wrong to put my hands on her,” he said. “And to scare my sister. It probably looked real bad, what was happening.”
“You put your hand on a girl like that, I’m not just going to stand by,” Alf said.
“And I appreciate it,” AK47 said. “Don’t we, Gert?”
He didn’t say anything. AK47 gave him THE LOOK. “I was wrong,” Gert said finally.
Alf put the knife down. “Well. Fuck you anyway,” he said, and shut the door.
“Well, that went well,” AK47 said.
chapter fourteen
It was the day of the library interview. Wednesdays are perfect because they are my reading days at the library already. But Big Todd told me that my interview was not at the library by the Community Center that I went to.
“It’s a bit off the beaten path,” he said, an expression that means a place that people did not go to and beat down with their feet to make a path.
“Oh,” I said, and Big Todd gave me a weird look.
“You’re okay with that? We can cancel if you want.”
“No,” I said. “Part of a hero’s legend is doing things that are off the beaten path.”
Big Todd smiled. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said.
He drove me to the library and gave me bus schedules and directions, driving the exact way the buses would go. I followed along with my finger on the map, while reading the directions out loud.
“You look good, by the way,” Big Todd said. “Very professional.”
“Thanks. AK47 helped pick this out. And fancy underwear for Marxy.”
“Oh boy,” Big Todd said. “TMI on that one.”
He meant “too much information.” He laughed and I asked him if he wanted to know a secret. “If it’s about you and Marxy doing the dirty, please, no thank you.”
“It’s not. Gert and AK47 are back together.”
Big Todd looked over. “Yeah? Like officially?”
I shrugged. “She stayed over the last two nights. And they’ve been having sex.”
And then we both said “TMI” at the same time and laughed. “Well,” Big Todd said, “as long as they’re both happy and he treats her right, and you right, I’m okay with it.” He pointed ahead at a small building that looked like a red-brick house that had eaten a lot of glass windows and metal. “That’s it. Up there.”
* * *
Even though I didn’t have any work experience, Big Todd helped me make a résumé that made it look like I could be a good library worker. The library woman, whose name was Carol, chewed on the end of the pencil. Big Todd crossed his legs. He was nervous and kept making his legs bounce up and down.
We were sitting in an office with the glass windows. All around were shelves of books and people reading at tables. A giant fake palm tree was tall over everything. Big Todd said he would come with me for moral support, but also to answer any questions the woman at the library had. Normally he did not go with people applying for jobs. I was a special case, he said, but he did not say what made me special.
We sat quietly while Carol read the résumé. She flipped over the page to see if there was anything on the other side. Then she put it down on the table.
“We don’t have any available openings,” Carol said. “And we have a waiting list for graduate students in library sciences. They usually get the internships.”
Big Todd sat up. “On the phone they said—”
“I don’t know what they told you,” Carol said. She took her glasses off and put them back on. Big Todd was moving in his chair.
“I am a hard worker,” I said to Carol.
“I’m sure you are. But we don’t have any jobs. And being a patron is different from working here. More rules.”
The word patron means people who come to libraries. That was something I wrote in my cover letter: that I was an “avid patron of libraries” and knew how they worked and where all the books were.
“Can she maybe do some volunteer work and then transition into some paid shifts?” Big Todd asked.
Carol said that she didn’t expect to have any vacancies in the near future. I asked how did she know the future, and instead of getting angry, she laughed.
“Uh-huh. Tell me why you want to work here?”
“Everything is in the cover letter,” Big Todd said. We had worked on the cover letter for two hours before the interview, changing words until I sounded very smart.
“I wasn’t asking you. I was asking her.”
The question was one Big Todd had made me answer a hundred times before the interview. It was a question that people asked in every job interview. Big Todd had made a list of reasons why I was perfect for the library. He wrote all of it while I talked about what I liked about being there and reading. I had forgotten it at home.
Carol was waiting. She was treating me very seriously, which made me nervous but also like I was an adult and not someone who needed everything done for them. Big Todd cleared his throat and asked if I was okay.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten, not out loud, inside my head.
Big Todd poked me with his foot under the table.
“I forgot the paper with my answers about why I would be perfect to work in the library,” I said.
�
��Do you need to read the answers?” Carol asked.
“She just gets nervous,” Big Todd said.
“Just tell the truth,” Carol said. “The truth is what I want to hear.”
I told her that my brother and I had moved out from a bad place to live together. “He is very smart but didn’t do well in school. He got a scholarship to the college.”
I told her that Gert always worked so hard to make me safe, and that I wanted to help him now because he had a debt he needed to pay. I said that I went to the library by my house all the time, and that reading is very important and that I wanted to help others find books they wanted.
Carol put down my résumé. “Once or twice a week,” she said. “That’s the best I can do. And it’s probably not going to be permanent.”
“Does that mean I have the job?” I asked.
Carol said I had a trial period. If I did good, I could keep working. “We’ll get you the forms and figure out your schedule when you come in next time. How does that sound?”
We got up and shook hands. Big Todd told me to not go for a dab, since employers want employees to be professional. Dabs are not professional.
Outside, Big Todd went in for a dab. I didn’t want a dab. I wanted a hug. Big Todd had proven himself to be a powerful member of the tribe.
“All right, all right,” Big Todd said. When we stopped hugging he touched my shoulder and got a very serious look. “Hey, that thing you said, about debt? What did you mean?”
I told him the definition of debt that he had taught me: when someone owes someone, or a company, something.
“With banks and businesses and in modern times, it usually means money,” Big Todd said.
We walked to his car.
“It’s none of my business, not really, but you can talk to me about stuff. Okay?”
I told him I knew that, and that even though he was not in my tribe, he was in a neighboring tribe that was very close to my tribe and which my tribe respected very much.
* * *
When Big Todd dropped me off, Gert came out to meet me. AK47 high-fived me and said she was proud of me. Then Gert did something he had never done before: he waved to Big Todd, who was standing outside of his car parked in front of the building.
When We Were Vikings Page 13